The Year -
2015 AD
The Place
-
Launceston, in the Tasmanian Subdivision of the Scientific Republic of
Australia
The Scene -
An ordinary family sharing breakfast on an ordinary workday, 25th
December.
The Characters - Dad, Mum, and their only child Anna.

Dad

(reading
the news viewer) "I see the Prime Scientist is off on
another trip to Europe again. Those backward people still believe in
democracy! (laughs) It must be so
frustrating for the P.S. to negotiate scientific treaties with
them."

Mum

"It could be worse
Dear, he could be going to America (laughs).
Now that everything here is decided by strict scientific method instead
of those tiresome elections, life is so much more rational.We have drugs for every disease(La Roche News, 2012), children receive free
Skinner Conditioning at school (Skinner, 1963),
murderers are now discouraged from acting so inappropriately (Supreme Scientific Court Hansard, 2005),
religion has finally been banned, and the government is run on
scientific principles by our top scientists and psychologists."

Dad

"And don't forget the
unsexing of all those people with a below-100 IQ. That really prevents
degradation of the human species. We're so lucky for us both to have
above-100 IQs, so we could have Anna, our one-child quota." (looks indulgently at Anna eating her breakfast cereal)

Anna

"Can I have some more
nutritious vitamin-enhanced breakfast cereal, Mum?"

Mum

"Now Anna, you know
that you should only have 50 grams per day. It's not good for your
vitamin balance to have any more than that (Kellogg,
2011)"

Anna

(indignant) "But
according to Klein (2013), the
psychological effects of denial can be more adverse than the detrimental
effects of vitamin imbalance!"

Mum

"Now dear, you have no
scientific proof of that. Vitamin imbalance can cause behavioural
effects as well (Schimmelgruber 2014)."

(sternly)
"Now you two, that's really not very appropriate to talk like that.
It's most unscientific to engage in bickering that way."

Mum

(embarrassed)
"Sorry dear, I forgot. - But I did
cite more references!"

Dad

(changing
the subject) "Look, it says here in the News Viewer that the
last of those subversive anti-science people has been sentenced by the
Supreme Scientific Court to compulsory Skinner re-programming"

Mum

"Who is that
dear?"

Dad

"You know, that John
Daly climate subversive who's been stirring up the non-scientific
population against the Scientific Republic of Australia for years now (Lowe 1999, Wigley 2005)."

Mum

(laughs)
"Perhaps they should melt the anti-scientist's brain!" (Dad gasps at her unscientific outburst)

Anna

(indignant)
"Do you have a proper peer-reviewed reference for that remark,
Mum?"

Mum

(laughs
again) "Er, no. But he is still an anti-scientist (Schneider 2001)."

Dad

(patronising)
"Now you know that reference was not properly peer reviewed, and
was not published in a proper scientific journal, so it was a very
unscientific remark to make wasn't it?"

Mum

(sullen)
"OK. I'm sorry. I'll try to be more scientific in
future."

Dad

"Whatever the
scientists decide about Daly will be done strictly according to rigorous
scientific method. He deserves no more or no less. He will be entitled
to the best scientific assessment, given a fair trial by anonymous peer
reviewers, and then re-programmed."

(silence.
Anna thinking hard about something)

Anna

"But what if Daly
can't be re-programmed? What if he resists it and doesn't recant?"

Mum

"Nonsense dear. People
are only stimulus-response creatures (Pavlov
1904, Skinner 1950). All the scientists need to do is give the
anti-scientist Daly the right stimulus to make him recant and correct
his unscientific ways."

(Anna
quietly thinking again)

Anna

"Then why can't we
make cats obey us with the right stimulus?"

Dad

"That's because cats
are independent creatures, Anna."

Anna

"But they are still
animals like us. They should, logically, be programmable by
stimulus-response methods like us."

Dad

(sternly)
"Anna! You know logic has been banned as unscientific (Mann, 2012). Only proper scientific method
matters now, you know - control groups, double-blind trials, rigorous
testing of hypotheses. You should know all that from school."

(Anna
looking sullen but unrepentant)

Anna

(defiantly)
"Then why can't we make cats obey us? I've tried to train our cat
scientifically, and it just does what it wants anyway."

(another
awkward silence)

Mum

"Perhaps cats are too
stupid to understand the stimulus we give them?"

Dad

"Yes, I agree, cats
must have too low an animal IQ to understand."

Anna

"Then perhaps Daly
won't understand the stimulus the re-programmers will give him
either?"

Dad

"But he must respond
to it! Why, if so much as one human being failed to act in the
established stimulus-response manner (Skinner
1962), then the consequences wouldn't bear thinking about!
Why, it would mean that our behaviour would not be scientifically
predictable after all. It would mean we all had free will instead of
responding to the external stimulus we are given. It would mean (gasp!) unscientific chaos!"

Mum

(shocked)
"Shhh, dear, the neighbours might hear you. You don't want a
visit from the Scientific Police do you? They're so strict these
days."

Anna

"Why shouldn't Dad, or
any of us, say just what we please anyway?"

Mum

"Of course we can all
say what we please. It's just that we must be rigorously scientific in
everything we say. It's so unhelpful if we are not scientific (Van Meer, 2009)."

Anna

"Can we speak out
against science, but be scientific about it as we do so?"

Mum

"Er, I don't think so.
To talk against science is, by definition, unscientific. Everyone knows
that since science is itself the only source of genuine knowledge, then
to argue against it must by definition be incorrect, and thereby
unscientific." (smiles in satisfaction)

Anna

"But that's a circular
logical argument, not a scientific one! Can you cite any references to
say that it's unscientific to speak against science, or cite any
double-blind trials, or even a paper in a peer-reviewed journal. You
have argued on logical grounds only - and that's illegal!"

Mum

(blushing
with embarrassment) "Anna, you're just getting me confused!
I wasn't being logical, really I wasn't!"

Anna

"Well for what it's
worth, I've had it up to here with all the Skinner Conditioning at school
(Mum and Dad gasp in horror), and I think
science and Skinnerism sucks!"

Dad

"You go to your room
right now! " (he reaches into her bag and finds an old book, sternly
holding it up) "And what's this you're hiding?"

Anna

"It's a book."

Dad

"I can see it's a
book! I want to know what you're doing with a book! You know they are
banned as it's not possible to regulate who reads them and that all
books must be burned by the Scientific Police! We are only
permitted to read the News Viewer or peer-reviewed journals. Did you get
this from a book pusher at school?! That Daly criminal was a
book pusher amongst his other crimes against science."

Anna

(now
throwing a loud tantrum) "Well all the kids at school are
doing books! It's better than this endless science crap. Books
give you a high. Science is dull, it's grey, it's boring, and it
suffocates us kids. But books? They're a real blast - not a page of
Skinnerism in any of them! And they're so ... cool! All about magic and
love and kings and princesses and politics and ..."

Dad

(looking
at the book cover) "This is pornography! (Whitehouse, 1975)".

Anna

"No it isn't! (Wolfenden 1971)."

Mum

(looking
anxious) "What book is it anyway?"

Dad

"It's that subversive
pseudo-romantic diatribe `Romeo and Juliet' by the criminal
anti-scientist William Shakespeare."

(conversation
interrupted by a loud crashing noise and the abrupt entrance of the
Scientific Police)